Files Section is OK

Hi all,

This is just a note that the situation with the Files section has resolved itself. We now have 23% space remaining, so there's no reason to clean any more stuff. However, to prevent this from happening again, I'm going to establish a new policy:

FILES 1 MB OR LARGER MUST FROM NOW ON BE POSTED AS "ATTACHMENTS", AND GO INTO THE ATTACHMENTS SECTION, NOT THE FILES SECTION.

You may not be aware of the concept of attachments, so I'll explain below.

Yahoo only gives us 100 MB of space for our files, despite that this is the year 2013. Because of this space limitation, we can be sure that we're going to hit the wall again, eventually, if we keep uploading large files.

However, strangely enough, Yahoo gives us 100 *GB* of space to store "attachments." Attachments are files that are attached to individual posts. The attached files appear at the bottom of the post in question, and also appear to in the "Attachments" section, the link for which is located above "Files" on the left hand side of the window.

There are three important things you need to know about attachments:

1) TO UPLOAD AN ATTACHMENT, YOU MUST SEND IT VIA EMAIL. This is a stupid feature of the Yahoo interface, but that's how it works. So if you're used to using the Yahoo interface and want to upload a file, you'll need to send it as an email.

2) ATTACHMENTS CAN BE NO LARGER THAN 5 MB. Anything larger will need to be hosted offsite and linked to.

3) ATTACHMENTS ARE NOT ORGANIZED LIKE FILES. The files section is really nice in that everyone has their own folder, hence making it easy to organize things very neatly. In contrast, the attachments section is much messier, and only allows you to sort by author without having any sort of file directory.

As you can see, this is a bit more involved from the way you used to upload files. However, this is a sustainable solution, enabling us to post large files like MP3's to the group without worrying about running out of storage space.

Again, please note that this policy ONLY applies to files 1 MB or larger. If you want to upload smaller files, feel free to continue to do so in the Files section, organizing things in your folder as you see fit.

Finally, it was suggested that we close the Files section altogether and only use Attachments from now on. I decided against a complete closure of Files, as the ease of organization in the Files section is very useful in giving everyone a folder for their "stuff." So, if you like having that sort of organizational structure and want to continue to upload Scala files and other small documents, please feel free to do so. You may want to consider linking to your Attachments from within your Files section, if you want to keep your stuff consistently organized.

Thanks, and please email me offlist if you have any questions about uploading attachments! I'll be happy to help you get set up.

Cheers,
Mike

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 9:29 AM, battaglia01 <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> Again, please note that this policy ONLY applies to files 1 MB or larger.
> If you want to upload smaller files, feel free to continue to do so in the
> Files section, organizing things in your folder as you see fit.

One last thing:

I'm going to start keeping an eye on new incoming Files, so that if
anyone accidentally uploads a very large File, I'll move it to the
Attachments section for you and give you the new link. If you see this
happen, I haven't deleted your link or censored you; I'm just moving
your info from one part of the site to another. None of this should
affect your ability to post information to the group; it's purely an
organizational thing to get around Yahoo's space requirements.

If you upload a borderline-large file, or a lot of medium-sized files,
I might do the same thing.

Lastly, if you prefer, you can just use Attachments for everything.
You can always just use attachments for small files too, if you want.
Files is only still there for people who like the idea of having their
own folder, keeping everything organized in subfolders, etc. If you
don't care about that, then feel free to just only use attachments
from now on.

-Mike